Greetings!

I am an Assistant Professor at the School of International Service at American University. Prior to that, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. I received my PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley.

My current research examines the livelihoods and lifestyles of men on the urban periphery. My broad interests are in questions of race and belonging in Africa and the African diaspora, and how “blackness” as a signifier – and in its intersection with gender, class, and national identity – illuminates our understanding of popular culture, postcoloniality and neoliberalism in the contemporary city. I employ qualitative methods: ethnography, interviews, and visual analysis. My book manuscript (in progress) is tentatively titled Story of a minor term: Racial capitalism and imaginaries of black masculinity from colonialism to crisis.